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Nuggets pull away in solid 3rd

Karl notches 1,100th win

By Benjamin Hochman The Denver Post

Posted:
01/23/2013 11:03:39 PM MST

HOUSTON -- Somewhere from above, Red Auerbach choked on his cigar. James Naismith put a peach basket over his head to cover his eyes. This wasn't a basketball play. This was something from another planet.

What it was, well, it was awesome. In the third quarter of Denver's 105-95 Wednesday win against the Rockets in Houston, center JaVale McGee had the ball at the right elbow, dribbled once to his right but stopped. Omer Asik leaped. McGee ducked under him while, in one motion, he flung the ball up toward the backboard.

"When I threw it, I was thinking dunk," McGee said. "I thought if I didn't dunk it, I was going to get taken out of the game."

Indeed, he caught it with just his right hand and unleashed a mammoth one-hand slam. And he stayed in the game.

The dunk gave Denver an 80-64 lead in the final minute of the third quarter, perhaps Denver's best quarter of the season. The Nuggets led just 46-44 at the half, but outscored the home team 36-22 in the decisive quarter, one in which Denver shot 61.9 percent and McGee scored six points (for the record, McGee was not awarded an assist for himself, nor a missed shot for the toss to the backboard).

And McGee, because he's McGee, made a silly mustache motion with his index finger across his face after the slam -- sure enough, McGee has a mini tattoo of a handlebar stache on his finger.

"That dunk doesn't fall under the fundamental area of basketball, but in the same sense, it worked, and I'm glad it worked," said Denver coach George Karl, who won his 1,100th game.

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"I hope he doesn't try it a lot in the future.

"But I'm glad it worked. I'm glad it'll be on SportsCenter, and we'll probably see it a lot more in the next couple days."

The win was impressive, putting Denver at a plus-seven for the season in the "Doug Moe System" -- plus-one for a road win, minus-one for a road loss. Denver entered the night sixth in the league in that system. And now, after two terrible losses, Denver has won twice heading into a six-game homestand.

McGee has had an up-and-down season, but Wednesday he was up -- like his head grazing the 1995 NBA champion banner. McGee played 15 minutes, soaring and scoring 16 points with a plus-14 rating. He was 6-for-7 from the field, with three blocks too. McGee averages exactly 10 points per game, but entering Wednesday, he had cracked double-digits just once in the past five games. But he JaVale'd the Rockets.

The Rockets are reeling, and as Karl said at the morning shootaround, "Their defense is kind of falling apart, I think they've lost some confidence offensively."

Well in the first half, the Rockets were pests, but in the second half, they appeared as the team Karl described. That, and the Nuggets were on a mission. Reserve Wilson Chandler, again, logged quality minutes. He scored five points in the first half but exploded in the second, part of the unit with McGee, Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari that separated themselves from the home team. Chandler finished the night with 20 points, shooting 6-for-11 in the second half.

"That was the most extended minutes we've gotten from him," said Karl, who inserted Chandler with the game tied at 52. "I didn't think we were being very alert in our defensive reads, and then the tempo of the game got faster."

Denver's Gallinari has been magnificent lately. He entered the night with a 19.4-point average in his previous nine games. Well, the guy they call Gallo scored 18 at Houston, along with three rebounds. And Lawson had his third good game since arguably his worst game as a pro. Against Houston, the little guy scored 21 points with seven assists.

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